XPRIZE Water Scarcity, a $119 million, five-year global competition launched in March 2024 by the XPRIZE Foundation, sponsored by the Mohamed bin Zayed Water Initiative
Track A, Desalination: System-Level Innovation
Semifinalist, announced 12 May 2026 (one of 20 in Track A, 37 across both tracks)
Named 22 September 2025 at Climate Week NYC (one of 93 in Track A, 143 across both tracks, from 674 entries)
Marine-Friendly Intake Design
$40 million for first place in Track A; winners announced in 2028
Jonathan Haswell, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, who runs OceanWell's non-dilutive financing (NDF) team
Semifinals testing, Q4 2026; finalists announced in 2027
674 teams from 86 countries pre-registered. 155 registered for Track A, 93 became Qualified Teams, and 20 are semifinalists. Up to five finalists will be named in 2027, and the winners in 2028.
Track A · System-Level Innovation · 2024–2028
86 countries · both tracks · launched March 2024
40 countries · Track A registration closed March 2025
28 countries · announced 22 September 2025
10 countries · announced 12 May 2026 · testing Q4 2026
Up to five teams · announced 2027 · testing 2027–2028
$40M first place, $20M second, $10M third · 2028
OceanWell is one of five teams invited to present at the XPRIZE Water Scarcity Prize Summit at WEFTEC, the largest water-quality conference in North America, represented by Jonathan Haswell and Jamie Spotswood.
XPRIZE's summit report
OceanWell announces it will compete in XPRIZE Water Scarcity with its deep-sea alternative to conventional desalination, capping a year that included an $11 million Series A and selection for the European Water Tech Accelerator.
Press release
About 50 qualified teams from 18 countries gather at the University of Calgary's Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking, hosted by the XPRIZE Canada Hub, for prize updates, testing briefings, investor sessions and a tour of the ACWA water research facility.
UCalgary's summit page
XPRIZE announces 143 Qualified Teams from 29 countries, selected from 674 entries. OceanWell is one of 93 in Track A.
OceanWell's announcementXPRIZE's releaseAt Harpa in Reykjavík, Jonathan Haswell joins XPRIZE Water Scarcity's Executive Program Director David Locke on the panel "From the Sea to the City: Scaling Innovation in Desalination and Renewable Reuse", at a summit held under the patronage of Iceland's Minister for the Environment, Energy and Climate. IDRA, the International Desalination and Reuse Association, is an official partner of the competition.
Track A teams complete field testing of working systems, each required to produce at least 1,000 litres of drinking water a day over two weeks while meeting local environmental standards.
XPRIZE and the Mohamed bin Zayed Water Initiative name 37 semifinalists: 20 in Track A and 17 in Track B. OceanWell advances in Track A for the technical merit and operational performance of its subsea water farm technology.
OceanWell's announcementXPRIZE's releaseThe semifinalist teams convene with XPRIZE and the Mohamed bin Zayed Water Initiative at the Global Water Summit, where XPRIZE launches its 2026 Semifinalist Teams Book and connects teams with investors, utilities and industry partners.
XPRIZE: What's next for Water Scarcity
Semifinalist systems are tested in the field. Track A teams are also assessed for the Moonshot Awards.
Up to five Track A teams advance, each receiving a $2 million Finalist Milestone Award.
A year of testing at scale: one million litres of drinking water a day, reliably and at the lowest cost.
$40 million for first place in Track A, $20 million for second and $10 million for third, plus Finalist Moonshot Awards of $3 million each.
XPRIZE Water Scarcity is a whole-company effort at OceanWell, because the competition is built that way. XPRIZE is unusual in what it asks of a team: a winning Track A entry has to run at 1,000 m³/day or more for a full year, as a module that scales to 300,000 m³/day, and the team needs a go-to-market strategy with the skills, infrastructure and people to execute it. What XPRIZE rewards is an actionable solution, meaning a technology that performs and a team able to deliver it.
At OceanWell the competition sits with the non-dilutive financing (NDF) team, which secures the grants, prize awards and public funding that carry a new water technology from pilot to first deployment. Jonathan Haswell, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, runs the NDF team and is OceanWell's XPRIZE team leader.
What the judges test is the work of OceanWell's engineering team in California. The team has taken subsea reverse osmosis from a 2021 prototype at a US naval base to a system in real-world testing at the Las Virgenes Reservoir, and that progress is what earned OceanWell its place among the 20 semifinalists. The 4,000 m³/day subsea pod, the subsea reverse osmosis system and the LifeSafe™ intake were developed under co-founder and CEO Robert Bergstrom and co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Dr. Michael Porter, and are built, tested and refined by the engineers now preparing the system for the semifinals. Our environment team's research on marine life protection underpins the Moonshot Award entry for Marine-Friendly Intake Design. The NDF team runs the competition; the engineering and environment teams build the system it judges, and each stage OceanWell clears rests on their work.
Track A is for complete desalination systems. The winning team must reliably produce at least one million litres of potable water a day from seawater, over a year, at the lowest cost, with first prize of $40 million. OceanWell competes in Track A with its subsea water farm.
674 teams from 86 countries pre-registered. 143 became Qualified Teams (93 in Track A, 50 in Track B). 37 are semifinalists: 20 in Track A, including OceanWell, and 17 in Track B. Up to five Track A finalists will be named in 2027.
Semifinals testing takes place in the fourth quarter of 2026. Finalists are announced in 2027, finals testing runs from late 2027 to the third quarter of 2028, and the winners are announced in the fourth quarter of 2028.
Jonathan Haswell, OceanWell's co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, is the XPRIZE team leader and runs the non-dilutive financing (NDF) team that carries the competition at OceanWell. The system being tested is the work of OceanWell's engineering team in California under co-founder and CEO Robert Bergstrom and co-founder and CTO Dr. Michael Porter. OceanWell's profile appears on page 29 of XPRIZE's 2026 Semifinalist Teams Book.
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